There are two cliches about the Nazis: one is that there wasn't a single one to be found after WWII; the other is that those who were discovered were only following orders. Both are reasonably well-founded. But actually, as Enzo Traverso points out in The Origins of Nazi Violence, the alienation that this implies, the separation between conception and action, was already embedded in the capitalist social pattern. It is normal in the post-Enlightenment era for the execution to take place without an executioner, so to speak. From the factory to the abbatoir to the death camp, the person who pushes the button is not morally responsible, but a part of the machinery. All that occurred to me while reading this piece on the life of Paul Tibbetts Jr, the pilot who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima (and never lost a night's sleep over it):